View full sizeGus Chan, The Plain DealerJerald King, 12, a student at Citizens Leadership Academy, dots the "i" after Gov. John Kasich signed into law the Cleveland Plan for Transforming Schools on July 2.

Gov. John Kasich had signed Senate Bill 337 into law days earlier, but he recognized the opportunity that came with a "ceremonial" signing in front of a Cleveland audience that until recently would have been unpredictable, if not hostile.

Before Kasich re-enacted the signing of the criminal justice reform measure on Monday, he closely scanned the crowd crammed into the stifling gymnasium of Elizabeth Baptist Church. He needed a prop. Smiling politicians, staff and clergymen surrounded him, but he needed someone else.

He needed a child.

So he called for any children in the crowd of nearly 300 people to join him on stage for the signing. A brave boy quickly answered the call and bounded to the governor's side. Kasich handed the lad a pen and asked him to dot an "i," and the kid happily obliged.

It was a deft move that showed how far and how quickly Kasich has moved on the gubernatorial learning curve in one of the toughest of states to govern. The ceremonial production gave Kasich several successes, all at once.

Namely, he publicly signed an important measure that is being called a jobs bill, a family reconciliation bill and a redemption bill. The claims are a bit grandiose but not completely overstated.

The law eliminates certain sanctions, or post-prison penalties, on some first-time, nonviolent felons who are frequently stymied in their attempts to work in industries that would require them to have state certifications, or simply to drive. Without the bill, the former felons could not get the state occupational licenses or, in some cases, licenses to drive. Without the bill, the state was unfairly penalizing the families of felons after they were released from prison.

A man convicted of felony non-child support, for instance, who is incarcerated and stripped of his driver's license post-release is punished, but because he can't earn an income, so is his family. That is a counterproductive but common form of double jeopardy. Children should not pay into perpetuity for the sins of their fathers.

This law relaxes such restrictions and has the potential to help preserve families and put a crimp in the cycle of intergenerational welfare dependency. That, perhaps, is why Kasich scanned the enthusiastic crowd for a child.

The move also won Kasich favor with an emerging ecumenical group called Greater Cleveland Congregations, a coalition of nearly 40 congregations in Cuyahoga County that attended the signing -- a group that is focused on social issues such as jobs creation and criminal-justice reform.

But perhaps most importantly for Kasich, the move allowed Ohio's chief executive to come full circle from the problematic turf he staked out early in his term as a leader, when he offended a lot of African-American voters with his choice of Cabinet members.

After filling 22 of his Cabinet positions with white men days after assuming office in January 2011, Kasich faced withering criticism from civil rights organizations, Democrats and other social groups. His response to the discord at the time caused even more aggravation:

"I don't look at things from the standpoint of any of these sort of metrics that people tend to focus on, race or age, or any of those things. It's not the way I look at things," he said then.

"I want the best possible team I can get, and hopefully we will be in a position that we are fully diverse as we go forward."

But there Kasich was Monday in a hot, black Baptist church gymnasium, accompanied by one of his two black Cabinet members, quoting scriptures, hugging politicians and being received like a man who realizes that job creation also involves enabling disenfranchised people to work.

The signing of the criminal-justice reform bill, which had been championed by State Sen. Shirley Smith for years, comes on the heels of the passage of the Cleveland schools reform bill. Both of these measures are ultimately designed to prepare people to take advantage of economic opportunities or -- just as importantly -- to help them create their own economic opportunities.

Kasich remains a maverick. You can't put him into a strict ideological box. His fiscal conservative leanings are bona fide. But so are his social justice leanings. He signed a long-overdue bill last summer regarding drug sentencing reform. And his concern for true educational reform is made powerfully evident by his recent bipartisan work on the Cleveland schools bill with Mayor Frank Jackson and State Sen. Nina Turner.

This much was clear at Monday's church event: Kasich gets symbolism now, perhaps even racial symbolism.

Also clear, though, is that Kasich is about more than symbols, which can only get one so far.

His relentless attacks to date on root causes of disproportional urban misery and disenfranchisement, such as counterproductive drug laws, post-prison sanctions and underperforming public schools, go well beyond symbolism. They demonstrate that he is living up to campaign pledges to create jobs, remove barriers to job opportunities and drive systemic social changes.

The reaction of the church crowd gathered near East 55th Street and Broadway on Monday afternoon suggests that Kasich is getting some of the most unexpected people to take another look at his novel metrics for fixing what ails Ohio.